


Let The Children Remember

by CelestiaTrollworth



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, One-Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-05-31 14:04:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19427464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CelestiaTrollworth/pseuds/CelestiaTrollworth
Summary: No matter what has been regained, no one will forget what was lost.This goes with the Healer’s Hands universe.I meant to post this weeks ago, but life got in the way.





	Let The Children Remember

The Hope-children were nearly all eight years old, give or take a few months. They had passed their kahs-wans and were, in theory, adult, or at least capable of taking care of themselves during uneventful days. Conceived by logic, but also love and desperation, in the darkest time the Vulcan race could remember, they were no longer the priceless bits of survival they had once been, but the whole new planet still recalled how much every one of their arrivals had meant in that tragic two years before the Great Rescue. That was why they led the school group to the Green Sands memorials.

As they walked down the broad and placid New Shanai Road, no one said the S’chnT’gai among them should take point; they simply did, with the slim unquestionable majesty of Arre up front and her even taller niece Ta’an a half-step back at her left shoulder. Had anyone looked closely, they would have seen Ta’an silently noticing everything that moved around them. What they would be—no, what they _were_ —was already obvious.

They passed the Science Academy’s front hall with its stained-glass arches, then the small lake that had been born of an explosion crater. At the Great Hall, a plaque on the large concrete planter south of the steps reminded them it had been, for a brief and critical five minutes, a Tal Shiar command post. Arre surveyed the tell-tale uncamouflaged repairs and gave a minute shake of her elegant head. “That such things were necessary.”

Ta’an had slipped into automatic parade rest. “They were. And, should they be again, we will deal with them suitably as well.”

“The wounded would need rescue,” said graceful slender Cordais. She had been the first child born on New Vulcan because of that very battle, her mother wounded almost on the spot where she stood. “I would need to do that.”

The tall boy who looked Human nodded and looked toward the low white hospital. “Then you would send them to me. I might be working right there. It wouldn’t be fun, but I would do the job.”

“The matter of restoration of things after,” said another child, laying a hand to his chin in thought. “It also seems useful. Perhaps that would be my part. Someone had to make these repairs.”

“Just so,” said Arre. “More important, they were left strong but with visible marks, that we look and see and try to understand so it might not be necessary again. There is a use for diplomacy, after all.”

“Which is why you are where you are, and I am in my place,” said her niece Ta’an, putting on her best stony glare. “Sometimes a diplomat is not enough, and someone must be suitably frightening. Do you think this will do?”

“It must.” Arre turned to the rest. “Shall we go on?” It was not particularly a request; the children all seemed satisfied to pretend it was.

The small crowd passed by the Great Hall’s steps with their doors at the top. Behind their arched reflective glass, two women stood shoulder to shoulder, watching the leaders. “Little daughter, our children appear to have grasped the concept.”

“I believe so, Mother.” The taller one in fatigues twitched the hint of a smile. “Oh. That Tarsus situation we discussed an hour ago? Dealt with. Peacefully. No damage done.”

“The best possible outcome.” The chief of the Council of Elders made a graceful little gesture at the new motto on her daughter’s uniform shoulder patch: What you start, we will finish. “That is, I believe, the proper sentiment. We should always endeavor not to be the cause, but the solution.”

The admiral looked after the children walking into the distance. “They will be. In many ways, they already are.”

With love, thanks and respect on the seventy-fifth anniversary of D-Day.


End file.
